Anthony Jeselnik Quotes

Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.

I would be jokesmithing. I had files with tons of disses that I would try to write as I was on the train going to school.

I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?"

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

I don't really write jokes down. I tend to have a premise that I work out and test on stage.

I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I'm working at it.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

I try to write three jokes every day. I don't sit down and write them, it's just things that pop into my head. Then I'll go watch it fail onstage that night.

I'm not as incredibly prolific as Louis C. K., and I'm definitely not doing a completely brand-new hour probably by the beginning of the tour.

It can take a few months to get a new 10 minutes. Usually it takes like 10 times of repeatedly trying different variations of a joke until I land on one I think is really good.

I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.

I just love that part of comedy, where you see somebody's jokes develop. They try something new to see what works, and I just love that part.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not. So it's hard for me to come up with things, because I don't write stuff, I don't write my act down.

I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.

I never knew if I would get my own show, but I knew I loved stand-up.

Bouncing ideas off people when you're thinking up comedy is great.

Comedians are really writers who don't have pens and pencils about them, but they riff.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

When you have a writing partner and you're writing a comedy, your goal is to make each other laugh.

I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'

You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'

There aren't any concrete steps to becoming a comic.

When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.

Some comics have long routines to get them in the mood - I just prefer to sit down, write out the same jokes in a different order and then have a little prayer that I won't be met by silence.